Control
by Harper008
Summary: He was too proud to call this a self-induced midlife crisis, so he counted one more lie and continued to play in his ashes.'
1. one

author's note; set post-Rage, although there's not too much focused on the episode, think of it more as setting the scene and as reference. enjoy. -breigh.

I.

He talked about control like it was a choice or a decision or something that he had willed himself into and his knuckles bled his regret and his mind was folded and contorted and holding back his memories, pieces of the past laced together with the lie of tomorrow.

Control for him was nothing more than a line of coincidentals, a series of left turns instead of rights and he stood now at the end of a road that was nothing more than the beginning of a circle because whoever said that you leave anything behind was a liar.

He felt like the surf, the jagged edges of the water when a storm kissed it's surface with a rough assault. He was being scattered into the clouds above and the sand below and there was no controlling the sea.

He took the stairs to her apartment two at a time and he didn't pause before knocking because he was a maniac and she made him that way. He said he was under control, but the only control that he could find was his lack there of.

"Elliot." Her breath caught in her throat when she answered, and he would have noted it but he couldn't because he had to tell her that he was lost before she could figure it out for herself and start the expedition to bring him home. With his controls falling away he was open and vulnerable and he was in the middle of life and death and he didn't know if be believed that he was living or dying and he needed her to affirm something.

"I couldn't go home." He didn't wait for her to invite him in, but pushed passed aggressively and stood behind her in the silence of their death.

"What happened to you?" The blood came from his knuckles like rivers of betrayal and Elliot shook his head to say no. She moved closer to him, reaching her hand to him slowly, but he brushed her away, but stayed silent.

He couldn't look at her because tonite everything that they were controlled by was strangling him and making him see that life was a lie and death was a promise and he wondered if people really lived, or if they just tricked themselves into it and were instead dying the whole time.

Elliot Stabler, the uncontrolled cynic.

He couldn't see the fear that she was wrapped in – wrapped so tight that she couldn't breath or love or live without pains in her chest and the slowing of her heart that reminded her of her mortality in such areas.

He prayed for her sometimes because he knew that she would not do it for herself, that she would not let herself believe in another intangible object in her world of phantoms, and he would pray for everything that she would not let herself be.

While Elliot had been playing in his brain, playing in the sandbox made from ashes of all the mistakes he'd ever burnt, Olivia had asked if he was okay, asked what had happened, if he wanted to talk, but Elliot Stabler could not let her know that this was broken and this was tearing and this was lost.

He was out of definition now, and Olivia stained the places that he had fallen into with his thoughts of how different he could have been and how different she could have been and how the things that really controlled him were his secrets and lies and ultimately himself and how it worked the same for Olivia.

He was too proud to call this a self-induced midlife crisis, so he counted one more lie and continued to play in his ashes, and when he came back to where he was and why he was there he noticed that Olivia had retreated to the couch, where she sat watching him, a pillow clenched within her arms, resting atop her flat stomach.

He swallowed the demons that held them for the negative possibilities.

"Elliot, I'm worried about you," her voice was soft. Elliot let the weight of his head fall and his head tilted back, his eyes pinched closed as he was blinded to what was above him and avoiding what was below as he took her words.

"You think I'm a maniac, Liv? Crazy, out of control, nuts?"

"Elliot," her voiced was laced with a hint of shock, and Elliot wondered if she was humoring him.

He looked back to her as she squeezed the pillow closer to her stomach, and he turned away sharply, in his sandbox of ashes there were castles now, castles that represented that which would fall away and that which was impermeable and that which appeared to be neither.

"No, Olivia," he growled, "he just – he got into my head and he got me thinking and we're just a pile of people controlled by everything and everyone and what we thought was ours is nothing more than someone else's."

"You don't believe that." She knew by the look in his eyes that he did.

"You start thinking about everything you do, Olivia, and you start thinking about why you do it and I have no fucking clue what decisions I've made and what decisions were made for me." She didn't answer because she had no words, they were lost with Elliot's idealism and he walked slowly over to the coffee table and sat in front of her, letting his head fall to his hands. "I love my family so much, but there are days, Olivia, when you get lost thinking about what could have…" He trailed off because he couldn't finish, and Olivia reached for him. "Don't touch me, please," his voice wasn't hard or rough, but rather scared and each world crumbled like stone as it fell from his lips.

This wasn't falling in love with her, this was tumbling - leaving a trail of ruins as he rolled through and left a path of dust that had once been memories.

This was giving the control of society, of the promise he'd made to his wife and to god and to his family away, and this was standing before her with lack of any sanity.

"Elliot, what has gotten into you?" She was molded into what everyone had made her and he was nauseous because of what she could have been if she wasn't so petrified of it.

"Don't act like you're not scare to wake up tomorrow, too, Olivia." He got up off of the coffee table and walked to the far corner, Olivia not able to move from the storm that had just blindsided her.

Elliot was thunder and lighting and torrential downpours and she was standing within it all trying to soak something up in the whirlwind of his mind.

"What are you trying to say?"

"Everything I've done has been because I was controlled by something, whether I knew it or not. I love my wife and I love my kids and I love the home that I made with them, but I know that I will regret the things that I don't do more than any of the things that I have." He turned to her sharply, and she closed her eyes to stay away from the blue in his.

"Love is control, Elliot. You will never be –"

"No, Olivia, no, that's where you're wrong - love is not control. Love is giving up control," he corrected her, but his body ached because he knew that that was the one thing that she had never allowed herself to give up.

"Elliot, if you want to talk about Kathy and the kids and –"

"You never had kids, Olivia, because your father is still controlling you. He's playing with you and he's changing you even though you've never even fucking known him." He was boiling red and Olivia noticed this through the wall of tears that her eyes had built.

This was a line he rarely ever crossed, but tonite he went running past.

"You say things, sometimes, Olivia, about how you can't do it because of what could be – that's control. That control he gave you, that's not love. Do you know what you're about to give up?" He wanted to make her better and lace her back together and take away every piece of anything that controlled her.

He wanted to set her free.

"I am controlled and you are controlled and I can't even look at you for all that we've lost to that." He was crying now, and Olivia was sobbing because this was a reality that she had ignored and this was Elliot throwing it at her without her having any place to hide.

His knuckles were bleeding so that she could see, but his knees were scrapped and his hands were scuffed because he had tripped and he had stumbled and he had fallen and he had tumbled into loving her and he didn't know when it happened and he didn't know why it happened but tonite he was not under control and tonite he was the key and she was locked so tight that he needed to pull it open amongst rusted lies.

"What are you doing, Elliot?" She choked the words out.

"I'm thinking about everything I've never done. About ever adventure I let slide away; about every place I've never seen. And then I let myself think about the same for you," he started breathing heavily and turned around, punching a hole into the wall, removing his hand, now covered in blood and cuts and Olivia jumped up immediately.

"Jesus Christ, Elliot," She was behind him, her hand on his shoulder, but he ducked away from her touch for a moment as he turned to face her.

"Everything can control me, but I can't control anything – not even this," he was conflicted as he put his bloodied hand to her face, everything that was inside of him coming to rest on her check.

"So what do you want, Elliot? You want to go on some adventure you never could? You want to run to some beach you've never seen? Taste the salt in an ocean you've never touched?"

"I want to take everything that you let go and bring it back to you. Control is fear and I don't want that to be part of what I see in you, Olivia." He was bitter and blind and robbed of freedom.

"But you, what do you want?"

"I'm lost." He looked Olivia over, and she crumpled herself up and took herself away from his eyes, feeling as if she was his torn and tattered map and she left him alone to wander the globe.

He clenched his jaw and then moved quickly to the couch and grabbed the pillow that Olivia had been clutching earlier before running back to her and locking eyes with her.

"I used to think it was so good to be controlled, but now, when I look at it, I'm tame, but I'm lost." He shook his head, "you're safe, Olivia, but at what cost? You don't have to face what could have been but you're locked in what was. I see you, your eyes, your heart, your soul, I see it and I see you wearing it at moments when you'd rather not."

"I'm fine, Elliot, I don't feel controlled –"

"You are controlled by his ghost, by what he did and what is still inside of you and what never will be." He moved to her and pulled her tight fitting black shirt out from her body, sliding the pillow up under her shirt and she dropped her hands to her sides, the pillow feeling as if it were sewn together by fiberglass, little pieces that cut her as they slid against her flat stomach.

She didn't move and she didn't breath and Elliot looked at his play masterpiece in his play life and he fell to his knees.

"Don't tell me you haven't lost anything. Don't tell me this isn't a crossroad and don't tell me that you're not crying fear." He shook his head.

"Take it out." She couldn't fade into this illusion with him, fade into her rounded stomach and Elliot's relinquishing control to her and she couldn't let him be right, even though she knew with each part of her that he was.

"Look at you, look at this. Don't fear life, Olivia. Don't fear what you could give someone else because it would be nothing less than everything." At that moment, Elliot was selling her her own morality, she was buying her humanity and she felt life and death and calm and fear and she needed to stop pretending.

"I can't have this, please, Elliot, please, please, just – Elliot!" She screamed, and he pulled the pillow from under her shirt, but she still felt its presence as he pulled her to the floor with him.

"I don't want to hurt you, I just want you to see this, I just want to make you not be afraid," he collected her into his arms and she burrowed into him.

"I'm scared to wake up tomorrow, Elliot," she admitted through her tears, breathing the words into Elliot's neck, and he squeezed her for a quick moment.

He needed to change something and someone and he needed to make this better but he was lost and she was crumbling and he had just given his control to his crumbling religion.

to be continued.


	2. two

II.

The moon was still too proud to retreat for the sun to take it's place when he returned to her apartment a few hours after he'd left her alone and thinking about everything that she did and did not have inside of her and of all the shadows of regret that haunted her in the dark and lingered in corners of the light.

"We're not doing this," she said when she opened the door to meet his eyes. Her words were thick with conviction and his eyes were combing her over, taking in everything that he had done to her, every stitch that he had removed from her seams, and she looked to him in fear of his next move, his next word, his next action.

She felt like the sand, waiting patiently for the inevitable assault from the surf as it crashed upon it before taking parts of it back to sea with it, leaving the rest to remain incomplete with the memory of what used to be whole.

"Not doing what?" He stepped in towards her, but she stepped away from him, out of the reach of his arms and his eyes and his soul and she would not let Elliot be the thing that destroyed every tower that she had ever built, every ivory tower that she had locked herself inside of because that is how survival, at least for Olivia Benson, worked.

"Elliot, I won't let you drag me into this, because it's just this black hole of nothing, you're going to get nowhere by doing this and you're going to take us both down on the way."

"I have 17 days of vacation." He didn't respond to her because he would have called her a liar, he would have told her that she needed to see what she was comprised of because it was not what she had convinced herself of. This he knew and this he could feel and through this he could love her but he would have to leave her because she would never let herself drift anywhere near where he was.

She noticed that he was wearing jeans and an old NYPD t-shirt and lines on his face that gave away his age and his experience and his travels. And in the dark of the morning, the sky hung low with the moon and stars and threatening sun, she saw that his eyes were not clear and blue and hopefully but dark and blue and missing.

"Come on, Olivia, let's just get out of here for a few days." This was being out of control and running to something with no destination or map or guided tour.

He put his hand out to her, and in this moment of truth she gave him a lie, she moved back from him still, and turned away from his eyes. She would not let Elliot Stabler take the one thing that she knew she had – herself. He was still too unstable and too questionable and love, for Olivia, had to be grounded in rationality and logic and she knew that Elliot was compiled of neither of those. She had never been allowed to love him and now she could not let herself break her own rules for the twisted road left untravelled in his eyes.

"I can't do this with you, Elliot, and I don't think that you should, either. You can't just run away because –"

"Run away? You think I'm running away? I'm standing here, Olivia, trying to take you with me, you need to leave something behind to run away – I don't want to do that." He shook his head, his breathing turning fast as he saw Olivia's eyes through her tears, shining like the sun through the mid-summer's rain and this was everything he was controlled and conditioned not to want, standing in front of him a nice package of regret and fear and something that would never unravel long enough for him to get down on his knees, his hands folded in prayer, and recite his confessions.

The moment he started loving her had slid from his mind like the sun from the sky at the days end, and he felt as if it were perpetual, a perpetual love that had no definition, but he felt her heart build itself a shelter and he watched her hide within and he would forever remember the moment that she refused to acknowledge this.

Elliot turned his hand so that it was palm up and caught the fireflies in Olivia's eyes with the nets in his and he held them for a moment before giving her his smile, which she took to add to her pile of memories.

"In the palm of your hand, Liv," he said slowly and then drew his hand into a fist and let it fall at his side. "Maybe I'll call you, when I get to where I'm going."

And in the early-morning darkness it was Olivia's turn to play in her ashes because she knew that Elliot would never call because he was a nomad without destination.

13 hours after Elliot had offered to take her away from these moments of life that controlled her, she ordered dinner - take-out for one.

She sat in her apartment with a dull light and a plate of Chinese that came with one fortune cookie and one plastic knife and one plastic fork and one plastic spoon and one rough little rectangular white napkin.

The pieces of her that Elliot had not managed to take with him were bruised and resting uncomfortably within her, attached to Elliot's words, her life hanging from a string.

Tonite she wore a gold cross around her neck because everyone found their religion when they were so close to death that they could feel it's arms around them. Elliot had taken her excuses with him and she sat with her meal for one, her lonely moment of lies and she tried to ignore everything that she felt but would not let herself feel.

She sat in her gold cross in her one bedroom apartment and she gave her mind permission to fall open to the secrets it held in it's corners. She had loved without loving, loved him in the absence of being allowed to do such a thing, and at the moment that he had come to her, falling before her, she found control and she found safety and she had to not let him take her, regardless of it he had already unknowingly done so.

Suddenly Elliot's absence, and the words he left her with, the words that attacked and burrowed within her, pulling at her thoughts and the locks she's wrapped tight around the little regrets in her life, started to break and her body started to shake.

Everything that she had controlled so brilliantly was shattering in the absence of everything that she could have had and she needed Elliot to fix this, because he was the one who caused it to break. The glass would not have shattered if he did not nudge it from the end of the table, and now it lay on the floor in pieces.

This was the wreckage of her life after Elliot had blown through. These were her splintered pieces and she couldn't breath now because the lock had been cut and she was flooded with the life she never let herself live.

Every ghost that had ever graced her life controlled her, and the consequences of what she had now were nothing compared to those that she could have had.

She grabbed for the telephone without thinking, click it on and putting it to her ear to listen for the dial tone, but when she did so she heard his voice instead, she heard him coming through the phone, his greeting kissing her ears like fire dancers, and she jumped from the floor.

"Where the hell are you!" Everything in her mind was flying by, was moving in blurred traffic across her minds eye and she closed her eyes to be blinded to it, running her hands back through her hair because he had came through and scavenged through her life and left her tattered and tearing.

"Olivia? Are you okay?" He was scared because he could feel her tears riding on the waves of her words.

"Where are you, Elliot? Where the hell did you go?" She let the words play for him to interpret as he would like.

"Are you okay?" This was repetitive and this was fear and this was a love they were still too controlled to fully acknowledge. She knew that she loved him, but she didn't know if she loved him like she should or like she had to because of everything that they had been through together, time had bound their hearts with thorns and she didn't know the circumstances by which it had happened. "Answer me, damn it," he was furious because he was panicking with the absence of her words.

"You come in and you get me thinking, Elliot, you come in my home and my life and you take it and you make me look at everything and then you don't stick around to – to handle the consequences." She needed to steady her hands and her head and her heart, but her body shook and her body ached and at that moment she was dangerously aware of her own mortality.

"Are you okay?" He pushed the words out, strong and forceful.

"Where are you, Elliot? Where are you?" She didn't given him the dignity of an answer because he was the one who had ruined her while trying to build her and these were his ruins and he had to do this for him and now for her.

"I'm in Tannersville, South fucking Carolina, Olivia and I'm worried to hell about you! Are you okay? Would you give me an answer? That's all I want, an answer." But he lied because with his lack of control he wanted to believe in fairytales and castles and happy endings and he needed to be with her at that moment.

This morning he left her house and he got in his car and he drove after something that he wasn't sure of. Drove 10 hours until he couldn't drive anymore and now he was 30 miles from the ocean in a little motel for the simple fact that he could be – for the simple fact that he had the time and the ability and the lack of control.

"Are you looking at the ocean?" She was scared that she lost him.

"I asked you to come with me-"

"You shouldn't have to go anywhere!" She accused him, but she was running around collecting her jacket and bag and she stood at the door, the phone pressed to her ear, trying to feel him through their distant connection.

The miles between them were paved in guilt and he wanted to tell her the truth that he hadn't even found yet, the truth that was wrapped so tight around his feelings for her that they wouldn't let him convey anything to her clearly.

"I- I have to go, Elliot, I have to go."

"No, Olivia, wait, stay on the phone, Liv, Olivia, stay with me, talk to me, I'm sorry, Jesus," He was rambling, but he heard nothing on the other end, a click and silence and his life spiraling out of control because he took the time to go back and examine the possibilities of what could be instead of being satisfied by what was.

Sleep didn't come to him because his mind was running too fast, running through him and from him at the same time and he couldn't reconcile anything. He heard of people who would simply crack at a certain point, who would be sparked by something or someone and they would never be the same from that point on.

Elliot Stabler stood at the crossroad of a circle and he didn't know which way to go.

He set out driving because it cleared his head, and he continued driving for the simple fact that he could. He was free and he was lost and he had no destination. He wasn't allowed to love Olivia before and now there was nothing holding him back and he knew that he loved her but he knew that she couldn't and so he was sitting in a foreign town in an old motel and he was tasting the salt in his tears like that of the ocean, drinking it as he slipped below the surface.

This was an interlude; this moment would either link him to yesterday or build him a bridge to tomorrow and he felt his dreams sliding away from him, robbed from him by toy soldiers and he was trying to grab onto something before anything else could leave him – leave him scared and alone with only his doubt remaining.

Tonite he couldn't think, but he couldn't stop and he wouldn't let himself process anything as a regret because there were far too many – he stayed too long or left too soon, he loved too much or lost too little, and tonite he sat at a distance from everything familiar that would change his mind, he sat alone trying to figure out what he did want and what he didn't – he sat trying to figure out if he should go back to what he had or move forward to what he could.

The door shook with a forceful knock, pulling him from his tangled reverie, and he walked quickly, opening it slowly to see who it was before swinging it open upon recognition.

Before him Olivia stood, blanketed beneath the early morning sky, which had opened to let the rains down, and she stood with tears making trails down her cheeks, mixing with the rain to baptize her into this life.

"How?" His voice was gruff and torn.

"I'm a fucking detective, Elliot," she said simply, and he blinked to make sure the illusion wouldn't fade. "What is this, Elliot? What the hell are you doing? What are you trying to do!" She was sobbing because she was empty.

"Come in, it's pouring, Liv, come inside," he forced his voice to be soft.

"Answer me!" She was tired and running on adrenaline, having flown to Raleigh-Durham, the only red-eye flight she could find, and then having to drive the remaining few hours to where Elliot was hiding.

"I don't know, Liv, I just – I always wanted to just get in the car and drive, and I just did, I just – drove and this is where I ended up," his words were not excluded to their physical meaning.

"You're thinking about all those things you never did instead of all those things you did and look at where it brought you! You ruined me and you're ruined and – and Elliot I want to know why."

"I just – Jesus, Olivia – I see you, and I know that you want more, I know that you feel more and it's not okay for it to be all bottled up –"

"It has to be, Elliot, that's how this works, that's how you exist, that's how you wake up in the morning and make it through the day, the may be lies, but they write my story."

"I'm tired of pretending," his answer was short, and Olivia felt herself tighten as she realized that she had just walked in on the interlude of Elliot's life. She walked in on the silent moments between yesterday and today and she didn't know if she was strong enough to stay.

"I don't want to be your mid-life crisis, Elliot. I don't want to be what you think you want because you need a change at the moment, and I can't be what you leave behind when this is over and I can't be an interruption. You want a mid-life crisis, go buy a convertible or an overpriced new wardrobe."

This is the way his world ended, with a cry and a scream and the ocean in Olivia's eyes, the stinging salt water that burned as it swallowed him.

"You say that you want to ignore all the stuff inside of you, all the stuff I brought out in you last nite, but you knew it all along, Olivia. Look at you," he stepped out into the rain with her, "You came after me." He cocked his head to the side and gave her his smile.

"I can't be your mid-life crisis, Elliot," She turned away from him, the rain kissing her skin.

"Olivia," he stepped closer to her, pushing her hair back off of her face and looking her over slowly.

"Tell me I'm wrong, El, please," the last stitch of sanity was removed as Elliot rested his forehead to hers.

She shook as he ran his hands over her, letting them rest on her sides.

"Elliot," she breathed his name, and he closed his eyes, shutting her off to the blue in them and she started sobbing, crumbling and cracking and sobbing every emotion from her, but Elliot's hands held strong, "Please."

Elliot took a step back from her and swallowed hard at the realization that he didn't know how to do this.

"I don't want to be your mid-life crisis." The words tumbled from her lips one last time.


	3. three

III.

"_When nothing appears in a hurry,_

_to make up for someone's lost time" _

– _Song for the Life, Alan Jackson_

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Another promise broken by constraint.

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of sanity. Another thing she had to abandon.

They hadn't talked when Elliot ushered her inside, when she changed into a t-shirt and sweat pants that he had provided for her, and now she stood before him, draped in his clothes, hidden behind this curtain of uncertainty.

"What do you want to be?" Elliot sat in the corner of the old room, in a broken chair that was set under a little table. His head was collapsed in his hands, and he trusted himself to feel her there because he could not look at her.

His eyes would betray him to see something that could potentially not be before him, and he couldn't loose her like this. He could not let them burn brightly to a pile of ash right before his eyes when they had such potential to remain.

Scared and scathed and never the same, but remaining all the same.

Her cheeks were painted with black trails of where her mascara had run, her hair was in wet pieces, falling around her face, and she wondered if this was her greatest mistake.

She wanted to go back, but she felt herself fall through the point of no return, and she knew that she couldn't look back, because if she did, she would see only the tarnished ruins of where she had once been. She would see pieces of stone that had once been castles, darkness where there had once been magnificent light.

This was abandoning potential for the present and a chance and this was leaping without knowing how far down the landing was.

"What ever happened to William?" She didn't answer him, so he pressed on, "you said you could live with him, that you thought it could work, and then one day you just – you stopped talking about him." A deep sigh punctuated his sentence and this was frustration without the energy.

"I could have lived with him," she could breath better now inside this false place, and she refrained from telling Elliot that she could have lived with William, a nice investment banker who drove a BMW, but that she couldn't live without him.

She was embarrassed to tell him that when she had learned about he and Kathy and his life walking out on him that she had taken a chance that he would have never believed and let William go – that she had listened to her hope for just long enough to let go of William and still hang on to the strings that bound her to Elliot.

"You should sleep," he looked to her slowly.

"I'll get my own room. I don't want to interrupt whatever this is." Elliot didn't tell her that she already had - that even though she didn't want to be an interruption, she always was. When he was with his wife he would wonder where she was, when he was with his kids he wondered if she knew what she was missing, when he was working with her, next to her, close to her, he wondered if that was all they would ever be – he wondered if love really was all encompassing, or if it could be rationalized and broken up into specific areas; he played in his mind and wondered if there was such a thing as loving someone and being in love with them.

"Come on, Olivia. You're here. Stop lying, okay? Just – just stop." He slammed his hand down on the table and stood up. He felt like he was contradicting himself because she was the only true thing in his life at that instant. "You found me, for Christ's sake, you got on a plane and you rented a car and you found me. You want to tell me now that you can't even face me?"

"I don't know what I'm dealing with here, Elliot!" A wave of frustration was pulling her under and she didn't want to cry and she didn't want to yell and she didn't want to be here, in the pause in Elliot's life.

"Don't." Elliot walked to her quickly and put his hands around hers.

"What?" She was confused at the conviction that filled his eyes in reference to something that could have been anything.

"You're abandoning it all right now at this second because you think you've lost everything. Don't let this be a mistake, don't fall out of this now." His breathing became fast and he shook his head, biting down on his bottom lip. "Stay with me, Olivia, don't let everything fall away." He dared her to object with his words, and Olivia felt him trying to catch everything that she was slowly abandoning.

"I can still feel you," her voice was low and a smile fell slowly on her face.

She woke up a few hours later to the sound of rain still falling through the holes to heaven, and Elliot was sitting at the desk he had been at earlier, showered and wearing a white button up shirt, a pair of jeans, and the smile that stole her breath.

"I dried your clothes," Elliot stood up when he noticed that she was awake and looking at him.

"How long was I asleep?" Olivia rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and then pushed herself up from the bed, walking over to him.

"A few hours," Elliot shrugged, "I know it's not much," Elliot caught her eye as Olivia looked suspiciously at a pile of red sour patch kids in a pile on the table. "I got hungry and went to the vending machine, and this was all they had. I know you only like the red ones, so I saved you some."

This was the point at which Olivia would take her scars and retreat, but Elliot had already warned her against such things, so she cleared the tears from her throat and nodded with a smile.

"So, eat up and then get changed, we're going out."

"What? Where?" She looked to him quickly, and Elliot shrugged.

"I would like to say a nice overpriced restaurant, but we stumbled into a place where those don't exist, so, the guy at the desk said there's a local bar down the road a little ways that serves burgers and stuff. Thought we could get some dinner, have a few drinks." He raised his eyebrow to her, and Olivia didn't know what she had woken up to.

Elliot was going to make her do this without ever saying the words because there were none that could explain what they were about to venture into.

"Elliot," she started.

"Stay with me," he stepped closer to her, and Olivia nodded.

This was everything and nothing and oblivion and definition and this was an interlude that Olivia had fallen into and she needed to make it longer and she needed for it to become him and she needed this. For the first moment of her life was right here, with Elliot's eyes promising hers something that she had still yet to determine, but that she would follow him through his mind to find out.

She would play in the ashes with him and abandon control for him and she would tape together the dreams that had shattered for him.

"Give me 20 minutes."

Elliot opened the door for her and waited for her to walk through first before he entered the dark bar, wooden floors and wooden boards outlining the ceiling. It was dark and there was a little area with a jukebox on which a two couples were dancing at a pace somewhere between slow and fast, and everyone seemed to know each other and Olivia had remarked that she felt as if they had just entered the southern rendition of Cheers.

"It's cool, Liv. Different." He smiled as they sat at a little table that was up against the wall with two chairs, and when the waitress came over they ordered two burgers and two beers.

"Yeah, that's what scares me." The blonde waitress set two beers before them, and Elliot took a quick drink immediately.

"So you don't want to be a mid-life crisis." He leaned forward, and for the first time Olivia didn't move back. If they were going to burn she at least wanted to feel the heat for a moment before she was disintegrated to ash.

"Elliot, let's, just," she couldn't find her words in the mess of her mind, and she shook her head with frustration and brought her beer to her mouth, feeling as if she was going to need it. "Is that country?" Her nose scrunched up and she smiled and even though there was no resolution she felt, perhaps foolishly, as if they were going to figure this out, even if it was in an interlude of reality.

"I would assume," Elliot laughed at Olivia's face, "it does seem appropriate, given the setting." He waved his hands in the air.

When he needed a boat all he had was an umbrella, and he stood strong in the flood of her eyes and her smile and the fact that they were hundred of miles from anywhere and tucked away within the years of his life that he had finally let go – the mistakes and the regret and the wrong choices and the control and this was where he was now and this was who he was now.

"There's still New York, Elliot. There's still our lives and I don't want to be what happens here, what happens when you have to get away and I have to come and find you and –"

"You have to let go." Olivia's hand sat flat on the splintered brown wood of the table, and Elliot placed his hand on top of hers.

Olivia swallowed hard and she felt them being launched into this when they had simply been crawling before, and the pace was faster and the stakes were higher and her heart was still beating and her mind was still reeling and she still didn't know who she was, but with Elliot's hand over hers, and his eyes locked tight on her she felt herself that much closer to who she could be.

And she let go.

"You make this whole thing sound like I have a choice." Olivia took her hand out from under Elliot's and took a drink of her beer as their waitress came back with their burgers, and they ate in silence.

"Think it's still raining?" Elliot asked when they finished, getting up off of his chair and pushing his chair out from under him.

"What?" She asked, but he was already up and heading out of the bar, and Olivia ran quickly after him, ran out into the little parking lot filled with pick-up trucks and old beer cans and Elliot stood looking at her as she walked out.

And beneath the low hanging stars in southern skies Olivia abandoned the dark.

"Are you okay?" Olivia walked to him slowly, and Elliot looked up to the constellations, reaching his hand out to Olivia, who took it, and they stood beneath the big dipper and let it pour the universe all over them, and Elliot caught a few scattered pieces of light and placed them in Olivia's eyes.

Elliot moved the stray pieces of hair out of Olivia's face with his thumb and then nodded slowly.

"Moment of truth." He let everything that was not this moment go, and he leaned in and kissed the tears off of Olivia's cheeks. "The opposite of a mid-life crisis would be, what?" He pulled away from her and waited for an answer, but Olivia couldn't speak, and that gave him all he needed. "A few weeks, maybe? How about a month, would that be good enough?" His words were soft and he added to them a smile.

"Shut up," she laughed through her tears and placed her hand on his chest to push him away, but he grabbed her hand as it made contact with him.

Years of an absent nothing had accumulated to this one moment, this one-second of everything.

A sinner's prayer was released as Elliot leaned in and kissed Olivia hard, giving her his control and his pieces and whatever else she would take because he had just abandoned everything for her.

He touched his forehead to hers as the rain started again slowly, warm southern rain that brushed against their skin like short kisses.

"At least a month," Olivia smiled as Elliot pressed himself into her again.


End file.
